


To love and be loved in return

by BottomOfTheRiver



Series: Inkworld Appreciation Week Fics [1]
Category: Tintenwelt-Trilogie | Inkheart Trilogy - Cornelia Funke
Genre: An aro writer attempts romance, Arranged Marriage, Bisexual Brianna, Canonical Child Abuse, Childbirth, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Violante, Mentioned Brianna/Cosimo, Mentioned Cosimo/Violante, Not gonna lie my aro ass felt like putting an amatonormativity warning on this one, Past Child Abuse, Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24481432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BottomOfTheRiver/pseuds/BottomOfTheRiver
Summary: Violante character studyFor Inkworld appreciation week.
Relationships: Brianna/Violante (Inkheart)
Series: Inkworld Appreciation Week Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768384
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Inkworld Appreciation Week 2020





	To love and be loved in return

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of based Violante on Margaret Beaufort. I also haven't read the books in a while so please forgive any character inconstancies.

Violante had nearly cried the first time Brianna had told her that she loved her. She hadn’t of course, but she had felt her throat begin to close. Nobody except her mother had ever told her that they loved her before. Well, her subjects have but there was a difference to being loved as a person and as a ruler. It had taken her longer then perhaps it should have to say it back, though she had known long before she had gathered the courage to say the words. The mortifying ordeal of being known. Where had she heard that? Inkweaver most likely, in one of his poems. 

All the same it was very strange to love, and to be loved in return when she had received so little. Neither her husband nor her father had loved her and she had certainly not loved them. Her son was… her son was a more complex matter.

Brianna said it was not uncommon among the strolling players, that the Prince himself was in love with a man but Violante was not one of the strolling players. She was the ruler of Lombrica, she was in a tenuous enough position as it was, she could not afford to add Brianna into the mix. Brianna understood. She had understood a lot, after all they had known one another for so long. Her closest companion.

She had never truly loved Cosimo. Even after he had come back, and she had thought... But in truth it had all been for Brianna. And the Bluejay had only ever been an ideal. A hopeful idea that she could be free from her father’s shadow, though she knew she would never truly been free. 

You could not escape a shadow that large. It ran in her blood however much she wanted to bring her knife to her skin and watch him blead out of her. If she let him out, she would let her mother out too and Violante did not want to lose her mother again. 

It had been the Adderhead that killed her, not long after Violante had been sent to Ombra. The Adderhead needed a new bride and if his current one could not do him the good grace of dying…

The Laughing Prince had told her the news and she had run to her room and cried for days. It was only three weeks later that the Laughing Prince told her that she had a new sister to go along with her dead mother. Violante had never met any of her sisters. She wasn’t sure how many were even still alive. The youngest were surely younger than her own son, his last two wives were definitely younger than she was. Little girls in wedding dresses being dragged to the marriage by desperate fathers while their mothers wept in the background. 

Violante herself had been barely more than a child when she had married Cosimo. He was nearly seventeen but she was only twelve. Her first period had come barely six months before. The Laughing Prince had begged her father to wait but he had insisted that the marriage go ahead. 

Cosimo had tried to be kind, in his way. But he had little more experience than her and his fumbling fingers could not find the right spots. It had gotten better overtime, and Violante tried not to think about why that was. They had been married for less than three months when she discovered she was pregnant. It had been a difficult pregnancy. The midwife had put her on bed rest the moment they found out, for Violante was too small and too young to be able to carry to term. Over the course of the pregnancy she had grown weaker and weaker, till she could barely leave her bed if she wanted to. As a result, Jacopo had been born nearly two months early and she had laboured for a day and a half to deliver him. 

According the midwife she had nearly died in the birth, and told Cosimo that another pregnancy too soon would kill her. Cosimo hadn’t seemed to particularly mind. He was far more interested in playing the dashing prince then being a husband and she had been left with a son she did not know how to raise. How could she raise a child when she was barely out of childhood herself? When had barely even had a childhood? She had been raised in dungeon. 

And then there was that incident with the fire eaters and the laughing prince had withered away and died. Violante had begged the white women to leave her father-in-law alone, if only to keep her father at bay as opposed to love for the man. And even when Cosimo returned he ignored her. She who had been running his kingdom, who continued to run his kingdom for him while he was out doing who knows what. But he had been so handsome and Brianna had loved him. Even now it stung. Even now there was still a voice in the back of her mind telling her that Brianna was only with her because she couldn’t have him. But then she would smile and reach out her hand and Violante was reminded that Brianna had come back to her despite the coin she still kept in her pocket and there was so much love in her eyes when she looked at her eyes, Violante could not help herself. 

Yes, for all the pain how beautiful it was to love, and be loved in return.


End file.
